Slippery when Wette

This afternoon's premier of Hansel and Gretel, new production, was a triumph
of theatricality, I thought, for Richard Jones and his set and costume
designer, John Macfarlane, and a success for Mr. Jurowski and the MET
orchestra with the score. Of the singing and the translation, the less said
the better, but I won't resist my baser urges on this joyous of all Jungian
holidays.

The production itself, until the last scene or two, is one of the great
theatrical achievements of the last few years, and deserves to be seen for
its economy, wit and beauty of design. It is far more a genuine theatical
design than the bastardized and ridiculous ENO/MET Butterfly, which is at
best cinematic in a very low-rent way. Whether or not it really works for
children, particularly younger children (there were many in the audience for
the matinee today) is another question....there's little large-scale
buffonery or broad strokes, and Jones has resisted the need to elaphantize
his production values a la Zefferelli - most of the sets are on wagons of
different sizes, and the first act, almost entirely in shades of white and
grey until Mother enters with her black bag, sets on a wagon rather far
upstage and is framed by blacks which is visually stunning but probably not
very comprehensible to children. The second act takes place in a setting
that could be a lodge or a wood or a dream house, and which has resonance of
something much more menacing, as it should, perhaps a very large
holocaust-sized oven (thus the reference to Jung). Perspective and vanishing
point are deliberately skewed, and there is a large, lenghty table
diagonally set from upper stage right to lower stage left which serves many
functions, both in terms of the children being lost in the woods to being
the table 'setting' for their dream at the end of the second act. The dream
of an ideal dinner is beautifully done, with perhaps a dozen serving
'puppets' in large masks, and when the food is finally served on the large
table to the two children, you can feel their hunger.

Act III is rather mechanized, and somewhat old-fashioned. When the children
waken and walk to the 'house' , Jones pulls a real coup de theatre that made
me applaud in the middle of the scene. A mechanized cake, several feel
large, comes on stage on a scooter in the shape of a large red tongue....the
cake is sitting on the 'back' of the tongue. Brilliantly, the children 'back
up' to the front of the stage, the cake and tongue follow them and then an
opaque scrim falls, in the shape of a large, menacing mouth but with a hole
in the opening between the upper and lower teeth, and the cake and the
tongue are pushed through the hole.....brilliant. Behind this, the scene
changes while the children sing their duet, and I applauded the scenary with
many others.

The costume of the Hexe, here Phillip Landgridge, his manner while 'cooking'
and much of the acoutrements seem designed to make you think of Julia Child
(he's a dead ringer, I'm afraid, and his way with the flour is something
like hers when she was on a bender.) Nothing is really overdone about the
witch's house, but it's a little empty and barn-like and the gingerbread
children not particularly impressive. The stove is a lot of fun, kind of
like a modern electic that you can peer into, and Jones' direction only
really lets him down in the final scene, where there's not too much to do
but stand around and sing.

But overall, a wonderful afternoon of theatre, but probably above the heads
of a lot of the children.

The music was very well played by Jurowski. He's one of our best conductors
in this late romantic repertoire, imho, and it's hard to believe that he's
almost 40 and straight to boot. I suspect a few more performances (the
orchestra hasn't played this for a few years) will show better musical
values - the horns in particular, while always accurate, were quite careful
(with good reason) but balances were lovingly done, not least with the
moments of triange which just pinged without imposing themselves.

It's the voices and translation that let us down badly. Three of the singers
deserved to be where they were - a frothright Alan Held as Father, a very
fine Shasha Cooke as Sandman, and Alice Coote as Hansel....her voice is
maybe one size too small for this quasi-Wagnerian role at the MET, but you
could hear her and it's a classy interpretation. Christine Schafer should
not be singing here - I've heard her, or more accurately seen her - in a
number of productions, and she's almost inaudible (Cooke was far more
audible) and makes nothing of the words, so gave Coote real problems in the
duet. Rosalind Plowright was almost inaudible except at the top of whatever
the voice is, but everything was pronounced in operatice upper class
English, and yet never clear, and this may not be her role or her opera
house any more. I thought Langridge good to watch, but the role isn't in his
voice, and he doesn't have the power or presence for the role. It's mime or
panto, and he's fine with that but we would have been infinitely better off
with, say, Podles or a character tenor with more left. LIsette Oropresa was
a fine Dew Fairy.

The translation is wretched - I thought they must be using something of the
Martins', but that was unfair to Ruth and Thomas, and the only virtue is
that for the first ten minutes I wasn't aware that the cast was singing in
English.

Anyway, musically with the orchestra first rate, and a very fine and
sophisticated production....in future years, we should get better casting,
and I think the piece is really dark enough (as Michael Volpe has commented)
that the production does it enough justice that we can have better singers
in it.





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